Communication Intelligence Corp. – QuickNotes 2.0 (Windows CE)

QuickNotes 2.0 is an electronic note-taking application for Microsoft Windows CE handheld computers, published by Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC) of Redwood Shores, California.¹ This retail edition shipped on a single 3.5-inch diskette labeled "Disk 1 of 1" alongside a printed User's Guide, and carried CIC copyright dates of 1996, 1997, and 1998.¹ Founded in 1981, CIC was a supplier of pen computing software to hardware manufacturers worldwide, traded on Nasdaq under the symbol CICI, with subsidiaries in Japan and China.²

CIC announced its support for Microsoft's Windows CE operating system on September 16, 1996, saying it was developing pen-based software for the platform's handheld PC companion devices.² On November 18, 1996, the company announced Jot, a user-independent handwriting recognition system optimized for Windows CE.³

In July 1997, Casio licensed QuickNotes to bundle on its Cassiopeia Windows CE handheld PCs, and agreed to promote CIC's Jot handwriting recognition software in the Cassiopeia packaging.⁴ In August 1997, CIC's Jot and QuickNotes were included on a Hewlett-Packard CD-ROM shipped with the company's HP 300 series palmtop PCs.⁵ In December 1997, Compaq licensed QuickNotes and CIC's CE Speller utility for its new C-Series PC Companion, which featured Windows CE 2.0.⁶

The program documented in this package ran on Handheld PCs using Microsoft Windows CE version 1.0 or 2.0, and required HPC Explorer, a computer running Windows 95 or Windows NT, 80KB of free storage memory, and 100KB of available program memory.¹ It could be installed from the diskette or from an Internet download.¹ QuickNotes let users capture handwritten notes and drawings as electronic ink, write and erase as with pen and paper, and stamp pages with the date and time.¹ Pages could be organized using three groups of stamps — Event, Class, and Status — with up to three stamps attached to a page.¹ Text could be entered through a built-in Text Editor using either the keyboard or a handwriting recognition application such as CIC's Jot.¹ Using CIC's ink compression technology, each page averaged about 1KB of storage, and the program automatically saved all data when it was closed.¹

CIC continued to extend QuickNotes across handheld platforms: on November 4, 1998, it began shipping QuickNotes for Windows CE-based Palm-size PCs, priced at $39 for the application alone or $58 bundled with the Jot Pro handwriting recognition upgrade.⁷ That release noted that versions of QuickNotes were also available for Windows CE Handheld PCs and for the Palm III and PalmPilot organizers.⁷

AI generated using primary sources referenced in the footnotes